If I had all the resources of the National Security Agency and spoke with the tongues of angels and men I’m not sure I could disentangle all the disingenuousities of President Obama’s recent speech promising the end of the NSA’s “Section 215 bulk metadata program as it currently exists.”
For starters, I might observe that Section 215 bulk metadata is only one of multiple monstrosities the administration has been hiding from us—like its massive surveillance of Google and Yahoo, or hiring private companies to distribute “uncrackable” software deliberately designed by NSA to be eminently crackable. And I’m not even coming to the part about spying about all of our allies, who somehow object to the practice.* And if you think that the “new” Section 215 bulk metadata will be significantly different from the old one, well, you probably voted for Obama twice.
David Auerbach at Slate and Jacob Sullum at Reason do yeoman’s work in tracking down the president’s lies, including the massively fraudulent claim that only a truly massive invasion of Americans’ privacy—a Section 215-size invasion, to be precise—could have prevented 9/11. In fact, 9/11 could have been prevented by simple competence, something that was consistently lacking at the FBI, the CIA, and (of course) the Bush White House.
There were many other things to object to in the president’s speech. His comments on Edward Snowden, whose leaks put before the public all the dirty laundry the president wishes he did not have to explain away, were particularly graceless.
These statements reveal the president’s arrogance and elitism. Unreviewable discretion is pursued as an end in itself. The more power I have, and the less you know about it, the more I can do to “protect” you. It’s remarkable, and remarkably disappointing, that the president, not only a graduate of the most prestigious law school in the world, but, as editor of its law review, recognized as the outstanding member of his class, should show so little respect for the law. The president regards legal protections and guarantees as mere formalities, which can and indeed must be disregarded whenever it’s “necessary.” The treatment handed out by the Army to Bradley/Chelsea Manning and explicitly approved by the president displays this mentality in full: If we “know” someone is a terrorist, or an enabler of terrorists,† we can throw him in jail and keep him there as a flight risk even if there is no evidence to prove that contention, and we can subject him any and all restrictions and humiliations permitted by the law with no other ground than the self-justifying claim that they were “necessary.” The president’s appetite for revenge against those who embarrass him is palpable.
Perhaps most depressing was the president’s claim that “the challenges posed by threats like terrorism, proliferation,‡ and cyber-attacks are not going away any time soon.” Because there is nothing more useful to government than an “emergency.”
†Because anyone who embarrasses the president enables terrorists.
‡It is particularly disappointing that the president chooses to select “proliferation” (i.e., Iran) as justification for the operation of a massive, unmonitored internal security for as long as is “necessary.”
